Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself. George Santayana More Quotes by George Santayana More Quotes From George Santayana Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject. George Santayana melancholy history art If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters. George Santayana despair fundamentals ordinary The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt. George Santayana poverty pleasure memories Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience. George Santayana tales fairy-tale religion He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing. George Santayana vision believe thinking Reason and happiness are like other flowers; they wither when plucked. George Santayana flower reason The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations. George Santayana progress body science The combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man's good is found in another's evil. George Santayana savages evil men Art is a delayed echo. George Santayana art-is echoes art It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health. George Santayana doctors dying perfect The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words. George Santayana progress evolution may To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic. George Santayana elude classic psychological Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence. George Santayana sadness real believe You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams. George Santayana optimism body dream One real world is enough. George Santayana real enough world Docility is the observable half of reason. George Santayana opinion half reason Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things. George Santayana opinion causes substance Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana change wisdom memories Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their center. George Santayana imagination opportunity inspirational Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble. George Santayana youth noble nature
